BIG DATA AND DIGITAL HEALTH
The first of the six congress themes for the 28th EAHM congress is Big Data and Digital Health. This topic will be addressed in one of the six hospitals which the participants will be able to be visited, AZ groeninge. Why this topic? We asked the Chairman of this session, Prof. Pascal Verdonck, Prof Medical Technology Ghent University and vice-president of the BVZD.
“When it comes to technological developments, anything to do with data sciences, big data as well as small data, becomes important in the new medicine (personalised medicine, preventive medicine), in order to prevent and to monitor quality, which means that all data must be clean. Otherwise, you can’t extract the correct information from them”, explains Professor Verdonck.
“This requires also in the hospital investment in IT-infrastructures, hardware and software, as well as people with new skills. And that is certainly something that gives hospitals a reason to start partnerships with the industry”, he continues.
Speed is increasingly of the essence!
One of the speakers is Bart Vannieuwenhuyse, Senior Director at Janssen Clinical Innovation, who will be delivering a presentation entitled ‘Big data and clinical added value’. “On the one hand, we are trying to use scientific data properly to speed up clinical studies and get them to market faster. On the other hand, there is also the issue of the reuse of data for research purposes. This makes better & faster research”.
And a recent development is the GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, mandates that we must use and communicate data correctly (applying also common sense). This is another complicating factor for hospitals, and something that they have to take into account”, adds Prof. Verdonck.
Health Data: a building block for our healthcare
“And in general, all these health data are important as building blocks for the Belgian and European healthcare. These data streams are crucial to both the patient’s experience and the outcome”, underlines Pascal Verdonck.
This is why the BVZD has chosen to showcase these health data (data use, data reuse, information protection, data quality, etc.) in this session at AZ groeninge and also on the Friday afternoon (the 3rd day of the congress), when an extra session has been timetabled around this topic, together with the European Institute for Innovation through Health Data*. This session will be moderated by its president, Professor Dipak Kalra.
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4 innovations demos will be presented during the visit of AZ Groeninge:
• A first innovation will be the training of surgeons and OK staff via Virtual Reality (VR). With this innovation from the Johnson & Johnson Institute a complete operation can be performed in detail in VR.
• A second demonstration will be given by SPI, Surgical Process Institute, a tool that digitises, measures and optimizes all steps of the operation digitally in the OR.
• Further efficiency and quality gains will be provided by a third innovation, namely C-SATS. This is an online service that can do individual performance coaching and skills training from surgeons.
• Finally, you will be invited to test a fourth innovation of Care4Today, a digital solution that guides the patient before, during and after the operation.